


HANNIBAL Season Four: All He Ever Wanted

by sphekso



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Fantasy Season 4, Gen, If NBC isn't going to give us one then I will!, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:00:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4691240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sphekso/pseuds/sphekso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight years after the events of season three, Will Graham is spotted on camera at Dulles airport. An old acquaintance is murdered two days later, sending Jack Crawford on the hunt for his old friend... and possible new enemy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	HANNIBAL Season Four: All He Ever Wanted

**Author's Note:**

> This is more of a prologue to get started than anything. It'll end up being quite long and I might come back and edit this, but I had to get the first part out right now after the finale to prevent my heart from exploding. Enjoy.

Jack had never seen Bedelia smile before. It seemed to him that her smile should be frightful. Not an ugly smile—no one could ever accuse Bedelia Du Maurier of being ugly—but a _frightful_ one, like a smile a cat might offer a crippled mouse.  So when she opened her front door to greet him, he was completely taken aback to find that the frost her face had always held was nowhere to be seen. She was smiling, and she was smiling warmly.

“Agent Crawford,” she greeted. “Please, come in.”

Jack removed his hat as he stepped inside. “Dr. Du Maurier. Thank you for meeting me like this.” He watched as she pushed the door shut and set to latching her several deadbolts. “No threat of robbers in here, huh?” She paused at his joke. Her fingers grazed the last of the locks, hand frozen in place. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t—“

“It’s fine, Jack.” She finished locking the door and turned back to face him, that improbably warm smile still on her face. “And please, if I can call you Jack, you can call me Bedelia.”

“Bedelia it is, then,” he said, and found himself smiling in return. He held his hat to his chest with both hands, just above his heart. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Yes it has. How long would you say?”

Jack’s face scrunched up in thought. “Something like… eight years, now.”

“Eight years,” she said, tasting the words. She began to steadily make her way deeper into the house. Jack fell in step. “I can’t say I’ve had many visitors.”

“Well,” he said, “consider yourself visited.”

They reached the kitchen. The steel and polished granite, once gleaming, now barely reflected even the harshest fluorescents. “Wine?” she asked, but she’d already selected a bottle from the counter.

“If you’re offering,” he said. “Do you need me to…?”

She stared at him in open confusion, which confused Jack in turn, because he was unaccustomed to this new unguarded Bedelia. Her eyes widened in understanding, and her smile turned playful. “I can open a bottle of wine without your help, Jack.” She propped one of her crutches against the counter and deftly proceeded to uncork the wine. “See? I’m an amputee, not an invalid.” And then she laughed.

Jack didn’t think it was so amusing, but he forced a couple chuckles to placate her. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

“No,” she said, and let out a contented sigh. “Our first conversation was here, in this kitchen,” Bedelia said. “Do you remember?”

“I do,” he replied, “You were very stubborn.”

“No, I was just a good psychiatrist.”

The chuckles were real this time. “So you can handle the bottle, but I really must insist on getting the wineglasses.” He reached up to a tall cabinet and removed two goblets.

“Well,” she said, “if you do insist.” Jack put the glasses on the countertop. She filled the one closest to him first, then paused as she had at the doorway. “You do take red?”

“I’ve been known to,” he said. He took the glass and peered at it.

“Is something the matter?” she asked as she replaced the cork.

He frowned, shook his head, and took a long, steady drink. He didn’t savor the flavor, because he didn’t want to. “No, nothing like that. Wine is just marked for me.”

At that, Bedelia’s bottom lip quivered, and her eyes darted to and fro. “I have beer, or sparkling water, or—“ she shot off in rapid fire.

“Bedelia,” Jack said measuredly. He looked her straight in the eye until she’d calmed down. “Wine is fine by me.”

“Ah… alright. We should sit down. I hate to hurry you about, but standing isn’t my strong suit.”

Jack couldn’t help but look at what used to be her left leg, and felt the old rage start to swell in his belly. “Right. Sitting is good.”

Bedelia performed the masterful feat of crossing through two rooms on crutches while balancing a glass of cabernet in one hand. “Let’s use my office,” she said. “It hasn’t seen use in years, but old friends call for familiar surroundings, don’t you think?” She smiled at him again, a smile that reached all the way up to her eyes.

“Let’s,” he agreed.

The room was pitch dark before she flipped the lamps on. Everything swam at Jack all at once, attacking him with the trappings of psychotherapy. The idea of _therapy_ was not _therapeutic_ to him anymore. Not one bit.

“How long has it been since you had a patient here?” he asked, settling into one of the heavy leather chairs.

She seated herself in its twin and let her crutches rest at her side, unseen. He was grateful for small blessings. “You know who my last patient was, Agent Crawford,” she said, wine poised under her chin.

“You’re the first person to call me that in years,” he said. He was beginning to smile again. The old title felt nice. Dusty by miles, but nice all the same.

“I’ll call you what I like,” she said, and toasted with her glass. “To occupations, had and lost.”

Jack didn’t toast back. His face had become serious, his sight focused in on the rug between them. “You know why I’m here,” he said.

Bedelia passed her wine between her hands. “I’d hoped this was more of a social visit. I suppose wishful thinking never gets us anywhere. At least anywhere we want to be.” She took another sip, tightened her lips, then said, “I’ve already heard the news, Jack.”

“Then you know they’re back in the country?” he asked.

She nodded slightly. “Your former colleagues.”

“And your former patients.”

She set her wine aside on the small table she’d tipped her crutches against. “Why are you looking for them? Why, after all this time? If they’d wanted to kill you they would have done it years ago.”

“Alana Bloom hired me,” he explained.

“Alana Bloom-Verger, now,” she corrected. “She’s still searching?”

“She wasn’t anymore. None of us were.”

“Until now, then?”

Jack’s smile fell away completely, his expression forming back into the grimace he so often wore those past few years. “You said you’d heard the news.”

“I’d like to hear it from you, I think.” Bedelia reached into her purse. “Excuse me a moment.” She pulled a smart pair of glasses from it and bridged them on her nose. “I’d like to see you perfectly for this.”

“You didn’t used to wear glasses,” he said.

“We’re getting older, Jack, and it isn’t only my eyesight that I lost.” She nudged her chin down toward her stub.

“Aren’t you interested in prosthetics?” he asked. “I hear they’re very good now.”

“My stock in appearances is another thing I’ve lost to time. I get around just fine on my own.” She glanced around the room. “Strange being here again. I don’t think I would’ve come with anyone other than you.”

“I… appreciate that,” Jack said. “You’re sure you want to hear it from me?”

She made a little _go on_ motion with one delicate finger.

“There were… murders. A familiar set of murders, with a familiar set of people. Will Graham and Ha—“

 _“Don’t!”_ Bedelia snapped. Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I thought I’d be more prepared to hear his name by now. But these things have a habit of sneaking up on you.” A lone tear rolled past her right eyelid and slid down her cheek. “All these years, watching, waiting. I knew they wouldn’t be able to stay away. I knew _he_ wouldn’t be able to stay away, not from me.”

“They have unfinished business with me,” Jack said. He tried to keep his voice as placid as possible, but the fire burning in him threatened to make every word a lash of the tongue.

“And with me as well,” she said. “Perhaps me in particular. I’m the only meal they never completed.”

“Yes. And thank God I got there in time. Otherwise… well, I don’t want to think about the otherwise.”

“Is it truly such a thing to be thankful for?” she asked. Another tear dappled her cheek. “Some days I can still feel it. There’s a prickling, or a tingling where there shouldn’t be. Sometimes it burns like it’s swarming with ants. My physician says it’s common. I say my phantom leg can go fuck itself. Pardon the vulgarity.”

“Pardoned,” Jack replied, though he was surprised to hear her curse. “Things turned out how they turned out, Bedelia. I interrupted you before the rest. I do thank God for that.”

“You might have caught them if you hadn’t spent so much time coddling me.” She sniffled, and reached for the box of tissues she’d left on the side table however many years ago, during her last sessions with Will Graham.

“Your leg was on the table, of course I coddled you,” Jack insisted, a little more loudly than he’d intended to.

“It was _cauterized_ , Jack. You didn’t have to do anything to help me.” She wiped at her eyes and tried to compose herself. It didn’t seem to work. “Where are they now?”

“Will Graham was caught on CCTV in Dulles. Two days later, someone checked into the Hilton under the name Roman Fell.”

Bedelia’s eyes fluttered shut. She’d heard it on the news, of course. Everyone had. But the news coming from outside her security cameras and deadbolts seemed safer than the same news coming from an old friend in the belly of the beast. “You don’t have to spare me,” she said. “I know the rest. At least, I know as much as they’re telling us.”

“If you’re sure?” Jack asked. Bedelia said nothing, so he took a breath and continued. “The reservation was under Roman _and_ Lydia Fell. That part you know. And if you’ve been watching the news you know housekeeping found a body waiting for them the next day.”

“Why was any of this released if the investigation is ongoing?” Bedelia asked, her eyes still shut tight.

“Freddie Lounds was friendly with one of the detectives.”

“The journalist?” Bedelia asked. “She came up often in both of their therapies.”

“But there’s something Miss Lounds doesn’t know,” Jack said. He placed his wine on his table and leaned forward, hands tight to his knees. “The woman in the hotel room was Margot Verger.”

Bedelia snapped to attention. Her keen eyes searched Jack’s face for any shred of doubt. “Are you absolutely certain?”

“Positive. I might be long gone from the Bureau, but I still have my connections.”

“Alana will be next,” Bedelia said.

“That’s why she hired me. And also why she put a bounty on both their heads.”

“She takes after her late brother-in-law, then. But the scraping hound he sent was disemboweled and set on display. Money can’t solve everything.”

Jack scratched at the stubble on his skin. He could feel the old scar on his neck under his beard. “No, it can’t. But it can set things in motion. And with the kind of money Alana’s offering there’s going to be a whole lot of motion.”

They sat in silence for a bit. After a while, the pair took up their wineglasses again and quietly finished their drinks. “Why did you come here, Jack?” Bedelia asked as she raised herself up onto her crutches.

Jack stood as well. “I wanted to warn you.”

“You could’ve done that with a text message. You have my number.”

“There was something else,” he said. “I thought seeing another person who was close to… or who’d come close to them… might give me some perspective.”

“And did it give you the perspective you needed?”

“Yes. But not like I’d hoped.”

“You’re going to leave me in the dark about that, aren’t you?” she asked.

“It’s for the best, Dr.—Ah, Bedelia. I don’t want you to get too close to this.”

“What if I can help?” The look on her face could only be described as one of pleading, but with Bedelia… who could tell?

“Thank you for the wine, and your hospitality,” Jack said. “I can’t _ask_ you to help me with this. I can’t _expect_ you to help me with this. And I can’t _want_ you to help me with this. Or I _shouldn’t_.”

“Shouldn’t?”

“Shouldn’t. I’ll show myself out.” They stood close together in the cramped doorway, Jack with his briefcase, Bedelia with her crutches. “And Bedelia? I’ll be around.”

“Maybe I’ll see you, then,” she said quietly. All the warmth she’d displayed at the beginning had bled out of her. She was tepid now, like nothing much mattered to her anymore. In a fearful moment Jack realized this must be her natural state: locked away in her house, devoid of human contact. Her warmth had been excitement at the prospect of seeing him. And he’d taken that excitement and ground it into the cold gray dirt. If he could only bring it back…

“Actually,” he added, just as she was beginning to unlock the door, “maybe you _can_ help me with something.”

When she turned back there was light in her eyes again. It hurt Jack so much to know what he was now completely sure of. Bedelia was a broken woman. She’d once been bulletproof, but now? “Yes, anything. I can help with anything.”

“Let’s come back inside, then,” Jack said. “I’ll show you my files. See if anything sticks out.” He held out his arm and let her work her crutches past him.

Once, Freddie Lounds had called Bedelia the Bride of Hannibal. But now all Bedelia could be called was a lonely widow grasping at silhouettes in the dust, struggling for something to give her life purpose again. Would it really be that bad for Jack to offer it to her? Would it really be so dangerous to let her look at a few pieces of paper?

An hour later, and they were on opposite ends of the dining room table poring over documents. Two hours after that, Bedelia called Jack over and said, “I think I found something.”

“What kind of something?”

She tapped a page. “We have to see Alana Bloom. Now.”

Jack always did let them get too close.


End file.
